Phineas Priesthood: Profile
The "Phineas Priesthood" is a violent credo of vengeance that has gained some popularity among white supremacists and other extremists in recent years. Unlike other extremists groups, the Phineas Priesthood is not a membership organization in the traditional sense: there are no meetings, rallies or newsletters. Rather, extremists become "members" when they commit "Phineas acts:" any violent activity against "non-whites." In this way, achieving Phineas Priesthood status has become the goal of extremists committed to perpetrating violent crimes.
Hoskins is a Lynchburg, Virginia, investment advisor who has become a leading ideologue in the "Identity" movement. " Identity" is a pseudo-religion that preaches that white Europeans are the true chosen people and that Jews are descendants of Satan. Identity also regards blacks and other non-whites as sub-human or, in their words, "mud people."
In 1990, Hoskins published his bizarre magnum opus, Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood where he claimed that the "Phineas Priesthood" are Christian guerillas who avenge Judeo-Christian traitors. While assuming a posture of impartiality, he speaks with clear sympathy of The Order, of Adolf Hitler, and of murderers of homosexuals and interracial couples.
Letters left at the scene of an April 1996 bank robbery in Spokane, Washington, contained Identity propaganda, diatribes against the banking system and were signed with the symbol of the "Phineas Priesthood." The three men arrested, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell, were linked to white supremacist and "Identity" groups and were also charged with setting off bombs at a newspaper office and a Planned Parenthood clinic. All three were convicted.
In 1994 and 1995, the Aryan Republican Army (ARA) robbed 22 banks in seven Midwestern states in order to finance white supremacist causes and overthrow the U.S. government. Following their arrest, the FBI found a video in which ARA’s leader, Peter Langan, rants at length about the gang’s plans to "take over the U.S.A." and encourages like-minded extremists to kill law-enforcement agents. The video also promotes Hoskins’ Vigilantes of Christendom.
Paul Hill, the anti-abortion activist, was convicted of murdering Dr. John Bayard Britton and his escort outside a Pensacola, Florida, abortion clinic in 1994. Hill had written an essay advocating the commission of "Phineas actions" a year before.
Hoskins’ writings drew public attention in October 1991, when prosecutors in Mississippi linked white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith, then imprisoned while awaiting trial (and later convicted) for the 1963 slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, to the Phineas Priesthood. Earlier in the year, Hoskins had printed a letter from Beckwith in his newsletter that concluded, "Phineas for president!"
